I must get back to working.  I mean honestly, I’ve inadvertantly pulled a Peter Gibbons and possibly done, maybe, 15 minutes of work all week.  I mean, i can’t say that really.  I’ve worked some more than that.  An embarrassingly small bit though.  a nerve-wrackingly small amount.  It’s amazing how quickly a week passes when you’re playing around in photoshop and reading everything you can click from CNN to Slate to things that the BCM server won’t “allow” me to open at work (Mark linked Hitachi Magic Wand, but I’m not allowed to see what it is.  I can’t even link it here because I can’t get past the google search field.  Who will open my eyes?)

I may or may not have spent the last 30-or-so minutes clicking on every link on this Amy Sedaris page.  Someone, perhaps a fan or a friend or a pet, has linked all of her film and TV work.  Pictures. When i right clicked one of the images to copy it here, a tag popped up that said, “Sorry Dickalicious.”  Amy Sedaris’ page just called me Dickalicious.  How did she know my trick name? 

A few weeks ago when i was in the thick of some shit, Char wrote me a long, long letter and snuck into one of the lines, “you’re acting like a spoiled child.”  At the time, it really surprised me, but I swallowed it because certainly that can be said about me and everytime be true.  Later that same day, I called her because you know how those things go, you have to talk about it.  Within a moment of hearing my voice, she exploded into tears and apologized and I said “I probably got too involved in this…probably projecting a few of my own frustrations.”  At the time, I pleaded and said please don’t, please don’t apologize, mentally noting that my friend was, wow, disappointed in me.  Today I read that letter again.  And now i’m physically laughing out loud.  Because at the time, it all felt so heavy.  So important.  Now, it’s so hilarious.  And, I just called her out, and that’s hilarious too.

Spoiled Saboteur at it again.

If I’m not working though, this isn’t what i need to be doing.  I need to be finding us a job in San Fran.  I need to look into degree programs like the one Char found in architecture. I need to rewrite the heinous short story I presented to the class last Wednesday.  Lord, was it bad.  Embarrassingly so.  By “need,”  I mean “want.” 

And if we’re talking “want,” i can’t even get into it here.

I wish i was watching the Germany/Argentina game right this moment.  I wish I had cable and wasn’t presently missing Wimbledon, the Tour de France and the World Cup.  (what a great summer it is, eh?)  I wish I didn’t have a lifetime fixation with putting my hair in a ponytail or knotting it up in some odd fashion and instead wearing it down the way pretty girls do.  I wish I had the patience to give myself a pedicure. I miss when I was training and hardening and feeling so healthy and vibrant.

In fact, I wish I had the iron will of a parent or perhaps that of a person who has been spit on, shocked into unstoppable, unabashed anger force in order to talk to Jane Patrick Sandifer Hammit about her incessant nonstop glib-to-the-point-of-mania lying.  I wish I didn’t play to the role and let her manipulate.  I wish I could knock her a little, watch her eyeballs roll around and settle back in her head, refreshed, enlightened.  I wish i could make her GET IT.  Your world is not real, P.  Nothing you just said is true.  Your life is built on false impressions that you made up, right here, in front of me.  The voices in your head decieve you.  LOOK AT IT.  Just stop, look at it, close your eyes and get it.  Take one honest step.  See yourself. 

I really don’t think it’ll ever happen.  I have lost faith in her, honestly.  She will never understand.  But I can’t be cruel to her, I don’t want to be.  I never do.  What I am doing, the sin that will probably always eat me, is that I am not actively engaging her.  I just check in and listen.  And RECOIL.

A softer world.  Check it out.  I do every single Friday.

-originally written May 31…or June 1, depending on the time or moment of conception or the like.  she was not at all sober and prolly too stoned but safely home nonetheless and blissing out on her itunes colleccione.  instead of calling, she just decided to practice blogging again.  irreverent drunk blog posts; hell, in spite of the drivel, in spite of the knowing betterness, just to do it.  but then she never got around to hitting publish because she got distracted trying to decide where her pictures were and which she should use and how to resize them faster and make them way more utility. wwaaayy more utility. then, she just went to bed without finishing.  editor, this afternoon, not wanting to work on the research news release that she’s a week late on about the radiation risks and countermeasures in low-Earth orbit, decided to say fkkit and hit publish.  and thus-  

Charlene Salb,
i am in it.

Good god, Char. 
Goodness Darling. 
How could I start?  To catch you up?  Where would i even on this planet venture to begin?  You don’t even know how behind I am, I’m so behind.

You know what I’m doing?  I’m listening to LCD Soundsystem. I fkking still fkking love them.  Do you know what I’m thinking?  Every. single. possible. DELICIOUS. thing.  Do you know what i forgot?  That I’m missing out on it, Darling.  That next June is a death sentence.  That we never did a summer full of festivals all over the place and that now it’s summer. sweetie. darling.  And I forgot everything you left in the letter that you left for me to find upon arrival home from Orlando.  To remind me.  To send me off on this year/path right nicely.

Do you know what I did tonight?  I showed up at Trouble’s, I met all the people.  I probably confused them.  Or i didn’t.  It’s not easy to just be comfortable in a group of strangers.  I heard and met and saw talent though Char; real, honest-to-god-crowbar-face-(mine) talent.  It was free; I wasn’t at a show.  Just there on the couch.   taking it in and absorbing, to myself, what talent and gifts actually are instead of my idea of them.  Her name was Melissa Golden I think, and the girl can sing.

But it reminded me of everything.  Of the things I’ve been thinking and keeping. 

Can you believe this Char?  Look at this.  Give yourself a smidgeon of an idea of what i think about this.  Grin times nine times ten thousand.  Do you see Missie, her hand on her belly?  Do you see her husband Jon?  Do you remember the guy we used to know?  Isn’t it  ____???  !!!! Yes!!  Yes it is!  And, Conrad is due in moments.  Good god, what are we going to do when we see Miranda?   

standing outside Powell’s Books in downtown Portland

See this one, Char?  See the two of them?  Know how much I enjoyed THAT day?

*looking for me & missie beside The Gorge*

Dorkster E, red converse, Stylish Missie, sweetass track shoes.

In Love.

This is real, Char.  I was there.  On that bridge.  Then, we hiked up 2 miles to the source. 

What a fantastic idea.  I wish I was Matt.

A Shame.  France’s new aerial-view landscape site GeoPortal is overwhelmed with all of its new attention.

A hilarious shame, found by KO:”a blur of cheap wigs and masculine legs in designer shoes on a marauding rampage as an army of kleptomaniacal showgirls on Magazine Street in our dear New Orleans.”

“It all makes me want to connect a hose to the exhaust pipe of a gass-guzzling SUV and shove the other end up my fat ass until I bloat and die.”

- 6-27-2006

“It’s not the taste that bothers me, its the eating off bones.  Come to think of it, I don’t like eating any kind of animal with bones.  Or vegetables.  It’s like, if there’s something annoying to eat around, I’d rather vomit in my own face.”

-6-28-06

This very well may have bumped New Zealand from my #1 road-trip spot.

Iceland’s Ring Road. Perhaps.

Please, share this with me. Experience Mark’s audio slideshow.

i guess it’s sad how something so experiential for someone else, to me in this case, is honestly, almost hysterically, funny.  instead of exclaiming aloud in shock with some ”no joke?  you’re not kidding?!!”  i’m laughing out loud thinking “no fkking WAY i didn’t know when we first met.” 

i didn’t know!  and he was going through all of this?  how sad and disastrous and hilarious all at the same time. 

of course i wouldn’t have known.  i mean, we’d just met, i was the new girl next door.  i hadn’t knocked his socks off with the hungry hungry caterpillar rushing down memorial to rusk to capital after lunch on west 19th street and ashland in the crazy bullet with the manual shift. he had a goatee for chrissake and a boyfriend too stupid for any kind of good.  i should have known his insides were a rothko and not a twombly.    i mean, no wonder my j decided to try it.

HA!!
ha Hah!!
Poor darling.  I’m so sorry about the loving alcohol part and about the not-having-feelings part.  i remember when you used to tell me about it.  And all the while, i had no idea wtf you were talking about.  Like, wtf are the zaps??  that’s hilarious.

ouch

i can fly!

beardy…and weirdy

Take a virtual swim through it: WATCH THE VIDEO